Is that the Bowl or the

RAY RATTO, EXAMINER COLUMNIST

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, January 30, 1999

1999-01-30 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- MIAMI - For a moment there, we thought NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was giving Eddie DeBartolo a major dose of what-for by extending his quasi-suspension from operating the 49ers for probably the entire 1999 football season.

"suspension" to describe the league's punishment for DeBartolo's problems in Louisiana. He calls it a divorce, which again sounds harsher than it is until you realize DeBartolo still gets remarkably generous visitation rights.

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In other words, Eddie The D can't run the team himself, but he can hire the people who run the team, or at the very least tell the people who can do the hiring whom to hire. If divorce were this easy, half the lawyers in America would be eating tuna out of a can in the park.

Even Tagliabue tacitly admitted that his sweeping powers don't sweep nearly as much as people think. He even said he would make a final determination on Eddie's case in March, but by throwing out the trial balloon about the 1999 season, he made it fairly clear how he felt about the length of the divorce. Especially since it doesn't seem to impact personnel decisions.

There is, however, a larger punishment involved that you have to dig a little to find, namely, San Francisco's likely exclusion from the Super Bowl rotation. But first let's deal with Eddie's situation, or the lack of same.

"I may be a lot of things, but I'm not naive or dumb," Tagliabue said during his state of the league speech Friday. "Eddie is an owner. He hasn't been forced to sell. He has been forced to divorce himself from the ongoing dealings of the club. But one thing we didn't want to do was hurt the team."

Well, that seems clear, then. Because he couldn't throw the book at Eddie for not reporting an extortion attempt (the charge to which he pleaded guilty in Louisiana), he decided a quick leafletting would be enough. His claim that Eddie's legal problems and the decisions that led to them "embarrassed himself, his family, the 49ers and the league" was very much an indication of his own displeasure.

But to let Eddie still operate the team, even in this de facto way, settles the issue. In short, Tagliabue's happy, the 49ers are happy, and Eddie is . . . well, he's OK with it, too.

After all, if given a choice between losing your right arm, your left arm, or having your fingernails trimmed, how would you feel after choosing Option 3?

This was not the extent of the local news from Tagliabue's 11th annual speech, interview and variety show, though. He chose not to officially take the 2003 Super Bowl away from San Francisco despite the obvious stasis of the stadium project, but the eight-person phalanx from San Diego that was in town and lobbying like crazy to scoop up The City's leavings spoke volumes. Even Tagliabue admitted that San Diego had "the inside track," which is Tagspeak for "done, done, and might I add, done."

But we already knew that was coming from the moment the 49ers balked on their share of the cost of the stadium / megamall project. And we knew it doubly when Mayor Willie Brown turned all gray and gelatinous when the possibility of another renovation of Candlestick was raised. Tagliabue's decision not to officially remove the Super Bowl was actually a favor, and a spur, for San Francisco and the 49ers to figure something out, and fast, while knowing that they almost certainly can't.

Here, then, is the one area in which the extension of Eddie's divorce might matter. Since Tagliabue left the financial obligations of the team officially in the hands of sister Denise York, and she has shown a singular disinterest in spending money for even one piece of re-bar, that puts any construction back another year, which dovetails into Eddie's continued distance from the money that runs the team.

In other words, barring miracles in financing and construction techniques, there will be no Super Bowl for us. Not now, not in 2003, not any foreseeable time thereafter.

Right now, Atlanta, Miami and Tampa are locked in as perennials. There will be the occasional bone thrown to Minneapolis or Detroit. There is also San Diego, and even though the league has had its differences with New Orleans, the Big Easy is still considered the perfect site by most people.

What muddles the issue for the Bay Area all the more is this summer's ballot measure in Phoenix for a domed stadium, plus the new plex that will be built either in Los Angeles or Houston for the expansion team that Tagliabue said will be awarded by March. That makes seven sites (or eight, depending if you count New Orleans), leaving just about everyone else outside watching.

That would be San Francisco in the photo array of everyone else, standing between Cincinnati and Philadelphia.

Oh, Tags mentioned something in passing about Oakland as a factor for 2003, but he said it so quickly and mentioned it next to Los Angeles that nobody took it very seriously. Plus, since Al Davis is likely to live forever and his place in the league's esteem remains a constant, Oakland's chance of getting a Super Bowl ranks slightly below Newfoundland's and slightly above Hooterville's.

So what Tagliabue told us Friday was that he's still mad at Eddie for embarrassing the league but not nearly so mad at the 49ers, and he'd like to help San Francisco more, but you know how it is, time waits for no man, we can't just stop everything for you guys, and tick tick tick. You understand.

Indeed we do. Even Eddie knows it, and he has both arms and the well-trimmed fingernails to prove it.